BP Unfiltered

Chris Young Goes Coco

Remember that piece back in December about Coco Crisp's tendency to steal bases before the pitcher begins to comes home with the pitch? Last night another Athletics outfielder, Chris Young, paid homage against Joe Blanton. Here are some visuals. First Young when he starts to run compared to Blanton:

And now two images that show where Young was when Blanton released the ball and where he was when the catcher caught the ball (by the way: there was no throw):

This is the third current or former Athletic to steal a base in this manner who I've seen (joining Crisp and Cliff Pennington). Either Crisp's genius is infectious or the Athletics are teaching a different style of ball when it comes to swiping bags.

The images at the bottom are great. It might be interesting to contrast the styles of (successful) base runners like that, to look into how many feet of each steal is from the lead, the jump, and raw speed.

There are some good numbers on pitchers' time to home plates, and catchers' 'pop' times. You could probably come up with the 'schedule' (in seconds) of how much time a runner has to steal on 10th/50th/90th percentile pitcher/catcher tandems, and what that implies in terms of lead/jump/run.

Blanton did throw over once earlier in the at-bat but Young must've picked up a tell on him through video work. This was deeper in the at-bat, too. So he got a look at his normal routine from the stretch.